Encounter
by Valefor
Summary: It's a small world, as they say. Two characters from SIGN meet outside of The World. Potential spoilers for those who've not seen all of SIGN.


**[[ _Hooray for having no names to work with! But I bet the characters will be easy enough to figure out. Unless, of course, you haven't seen all of SIGN. Potential spoilers, so beware. No real set time period... Takes place before the end of SIGN, but I can't really get more specific than that. :) Guess this is more of a 'what if' fic if it's anything at all, one that follows in the footsteps of Liminality rather than SIGN. Physical descriptions might not be accurate since we don't get to really see much of the character in question. :)_ ]]**

It wasn't much of a job. As the day dragged on, he would check things on the computer, put things into boxes, put boxes onto shelves... Not always in that order, mind you; too much routine makes the mind a very sad thing. At the moment he was in the middle of stacking a number of boxes into a neat pile onto a counter so they could be further sorted and stuck back onto shelves. Such was life within a video store: order, neatness, efficiency. With those three qualities in mind, things went much more smoothly.

A soft chiming alerted him to a new customer entering the store. That day had been awfully slow in terms of walk-ins. Along the side wall, right beside the door, was a slot for returns, which had been getting much more attention than the door itself. The bin beneath always seemed half full no matter how many times he had gone over and pulled everything out to be checked back in. A dark haired woman with a young boy in tow smiled at him briefly before dissapearing behind aisles of movies.

A final case topped off the sizeable pile beside him, each one having been methodically checked in and rechecked for accuracy one by one. His coworkers called it obsessive, but he much rather call it thorough. It was surprising how many people would try and bring complaints against him, mostly false claims of extra charges tacked on, and demand refunds for nonexistant transactions. They rarely won against his documentation. As a customer would retreat, defeated with a red flush to their face, he would say, "Justice served," and mark another tally upon a small worn out post-it note taped on the counter.

It would hardly come as a surprise that he served as a champion of justice in a slightly different setting. The World, as it was known, was a haven for those seeking to live a little bit of life in a different way. Instead of just some clerk in a freelance video shop, he was the second in command of the Crimson Knights, The World's 'police force' as it were. They were there to make sure that the common courtesies of online play were kept in practice, or at least that was the idea.

He grunted as he eased the stack into his arms. VHS cassettes were just about as rare in the market place as the devices used to play them. The medium of choice for most people was the DVD, as it had been for many years past. The shop was situated in a relatively small town, where most people hadn't quite caught onto the digital media wave. If no one else was going to supply VHS tapes for them, who would? The big-shot chains didn't. Carefully he maneuvered through the flippy-door that kept the main counter separated from the rest of the floor and began setting tapes back onto their appropriate shelves.

Recently, an issue with a Wavemaster had been putting The World into quite a stir. He himself knew well of the player, as well as the detail that made him so famous: a monster unlike any other in the game was at his disposal. The one time he came close to gaining information on another illegal character was when the 'Guardian' as it was known came out to say a little hello.

Beneath his breath he growled. His roommate had found him unconscious on the floor afterwards.

He came around the edge of an aisle and began sticking tapes onto their marked spots as he worked his way down it. The boy that had come in with the woman was scanning over a few boxes in the next aisle. Action movies, always a favorite for the kiddies these days. He had his hands in his pockets and he probably couldn't have looked more bored if he was watching a glass of water evaporate. The clerk squinted a little at the boy as he passed by; the keen face the youth had looked strangely familliar, though he could not immediately put a name to it. When he reached the end of his aisle, he wandered into the one where the boy was. There were a few boxes to be returned near where he stood, so he took the opportunity to get closer for a better look.

The boy had short greenish colored hair kept as though he had just gotten out of bed (a trend in style that he could barely understand). His neat clothes hung loosely on a wiry body, with legs that looked to be slightly longer than they should be. "Can I help you find anything, sir?" he asked, wanting more to get a better look at his face than find anything for him.

It was when the boy looked up at him, when their eyes met, that an unsettling sense of deja vu took hold. Narrow crimson eyes belonging to the face of someone who doesn't miss what people might want him to miss whisked all over his own face before finally settling into a mutual stare. "I'm pretty sure that I can find my way around a video store."

Politely the clerk smiled and nodded and continued along with his chore. As he finished up this round of tapes, he found the woman and boy, who he assumed to be her son, waiting for him at the counter. The boy stared at something at the floor with an air of great disinterest.

"Did you find everything ok, ma'am?" he asked, speaking over the quiet beeps of the computer scanning in barcodes.

The woman smiled a polite smile, and gestured down to the boy with a nod of her head. "I did, yes, but my son had a complaint or two about your selection of games!" The laughter that followed seemed to catch the son in question's attention. Those dark red orbs of his eyes wandered up to his mother and then to the clerk.

"Let me guess... Not enough of them?" the clerk asked.

The boy nodded. "That and the ones you have are outdated. Most games exist on the 'Net now."

The clerk punched in a few numbers before a total flashed on a small screen. A bill was handed over and as he counted up change, he studied the boy again. When he was growing up, computers were just beginning to really leave an impact on people's lives. The general age of computer users was decreasing... Amazing that kids as young as this one looked were already into 'Net games. "Yes, that's true. I bet you've heard of The World?"

"Of course. Anyone who hasn't must be living under a rock or something."

He handed a few notes and some coins to the woman, then placed her videos into a small bag. The eyes... They say in The World, there are always distinctive characteristics that your character and your true self share. Most commonly it was the eyes that carried over, though their color might change. Even then it would be easy to recognize... Rather, it should be.

"So you play it?"

His mother had moved so he followed like a shadow, keeping close behind her as she walked along the side of the counter towards the exit and keeping his eyes fixed upon the nosy clerk. "Yes. You do too, I'm guessing?"

The clerk nodded as he held out the bag to the woman, who quickly took it with another smile before she made for the exit. "What's your name? Maybe we can meet up and do some questing."

To that the boy only smiled. "Mom says not to give strangers that kind of information. Good advice, really. Never know when you're dealing with weirdos."

From beyond the exit the woman called out a name. The boy's gaze lingered for a moment before he shrugged, chuckling, and joined her outside. Through the windows, the clerk watched as they hopped into their car and drove off down the road. An unusual silence hummed beneath the programs running on a television propped up in a corner; he was alone again in the shop, with several hours still lined up before closing time.

He puzzled with the nagging thought that he had seen the boy before but nothing came to him; no names, no clues as to where and under what circumstances he might have seen him. He stood there thinking hard until another chime brought him back into reality. No time to think about something that was probably just his imagination. He smiled a practiced smile at his newest customer; there was a job to be done, and goodness knows those boxes weren't about to sort themselves out.

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**[[_ I'm surprised I can blab so much at 4 AM. Review, flame, it's all love in the end. :)_ ]]**


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